Romans 7.15–25a is the epistle for Trinity 5 in Year A, and includes the famous ‘I’-passage over which there has been much debate.
Is Paul speaking in the first person recounting his own experience as a Christian? Or in his pre-Christian life? Or is he recounting the experience of Israel under the law? Or of Adam himself?
The debate is perhaps less complex than it is often supposed—but this passage has profound pastoral significance, as so many of us can relate to Paul’s sense of powerlessness in the face of the power of sin—and so can rejoice with him in the deliverance through the grace of Jesus by the power of the Spirit.
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The gospel reading for this Sunday is on the paradoxical invitation of Jesus in Matthew 11.16-19, 25-end.
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Im confused.
What, “Paul’s sense of powerful”?
edited
by what?
Who the I is in your view.
1. Israel under the law.
2. Israel under the law returning to the sin of Adam.
3. By implication, the position we can identify with unless we
a. know the change of sovereign in chapter 6, and
b. receive the Spirit in chapter 8.
OK?
One of several strengths for ‘I’ as Adamic humanity, including Israel, and thus following Paul’s argument in Romans 7:7–13 (which is almost certainly Adam):
Romans 7:22
‘For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being’
cf Romans 2:14–15
‘For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.’
Ian,
And I note you mention a ‘change of sovereign’ in Romans 6. But surely Paul’s marital metaphor of Romans 7:1–4 indicates a change of husband (see Romans 7:4, KJV).
To change a sovereign is an awkward imagery — as Claude AI points out kingdom imagery lacks all the essential components of a volitional, covenantal, faithful, relationship that the marital imagery of Scripture exploits.
Ian, I’d like to know more about the way Paul uses ‘I’. Why didn’t he write ‘we’, or was the use of ‘I’ simply the way grammar worked in Greek?
This is a recognised Roman rhetorical technique. It is called prosopopoeia, the “speech-in-character” technique well attested in Greco-Roman rhetoric, where a speaker adopts a persona to dramatize a moral or philosophical point without strict autobiographical or even historical identification.
Thanks. That settles it for me. By using ‘I’ he means humanity in general.
By using a high rhetorical style he implies the best of human endeavour is caught in a never ending hamster’s wheel.
Do you have a good classical example?
re 3 that would imply non-Christians given that only Christians have received the Spirit. Yet James in the video had just said Christians often identify with what Paul is describing.
Do you see why Im confused by your understanding? You seem to reject the view, often held, that the ‘I’ passage about not doing what I want to do etc is not describing Christian experience, as if there is no war going on. I would suggest there is.
Excuse me, Is this a private conversation of the inner ring type or restricted engagement or somewhat else?
ALAN KEMPSON
June 30, 2026 at 12:34 pm
Thank you Ian, your answer speaks volumes.
Tom Wright says of Romans 7:1–4 (correctly to my mind):
‘It was not the law that was the first husband, rather it was the law (i.e. the “law of the husband” v. 2) that had bound the woman TO the first husband.’
Thus, in this imagery, Wright argues that the law Jesus died to, was the law of the husband — NOT to the ‘Torah’.
Ian implied that Paul had got himself in a twist with this metaphor — C. H. Dodd says the same.
But Tom Wright was onto it. Paul is addressing the Deuteronomy 24 ‘law of the husband’ (not the ‘law of marriage’ as some translations have it) — whereby a husband could prevent his ex-wife marrying if he so chose. Obviously, his death would circumvent that. And so would the wife be free from it if she was dead — but then there would be no marriage for her at all.
Paul exploits this and says if the ex-wife is taken into death with Christ and raised with him, she is free ‘to belong to him’ [Christ]’ (Rom 7:4).
All this is missed by exegetes because they fail to engage with the marital imagery (and this post has been no exception) — for reasons that I do not understand — and of course Paul’s brilliant intellect runs free outside of Confessional walls.
What I think Tom Wright gets wrong is that he thinks the first husband is our sinful nature — now that would be a tortuous metaphor.
N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in Acts Introduction to Epistolary Literature Romans 1 Corinthians (ed. Leander E. Keck; vol. X of The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 2002), 539, 559.
Keller also refers to marriage, in his book Romans for You.
More could be added but I think that positions are already determined.
Indeed, Peter. Otherwise is there not some sort of perfectionism being adopted?
Not only that, just because there may be some well arrested Greek rhetoric, it is a huge presumption, taking into account what has gone before and comes after in the book of Romans. How does Romans 8, fit with employment of Greek rhetoric. Is there any evidence that Saul/Paul the Jew actually knew of that rhetoric, let alone employ it?
I recall not long after my conversion, I attended a lecture on Romans 7 by a well known evangelical minister (yes. I know, whose name escapes me) ans he opened by saying that while he would stick to the invition to speak specifically on Romans 7, he considered that it wasn’t really possible to speak on the that chapter as a stand alone as it was without speaking also on Romans 8.